Scarlet Moons

Chapter One With wild hair that would reach to her waist when it was calm, now flowing on the breeze, Felicity Moon blew up the apartment stairs. Coming to rest on the top step, she was panting, out of breath. About to put her key in the lock, she stopped short hearing the sounds from the other side of the unlocked door. KC. Not KC singing, or KC dancing nymph-like over hardwood floor and landing in a clumsy plop, or KC making love to Jake … No, this was KC hollering loudly, between the sound of something dreadful smacking against her flesh. Felicity listened outside the door, opening it just a crack. Distinctive and plaintive wails of woe issued from the poor woman, continuing nonstop as fierce smacks with the palm of a hand were laid on what must have been naked skin. Her delectable ass must be the color of a pink blooming flower, or a summer sunset, or worse yet, the same scarlet hue she blushed on her pale cheeks. Good lord! Felicity thought to herself, KC was being spanked! Slowly inching her way inside so the door wouldn’t squeak, Felicity hoped she could sneak in without her roommate or the spanker realizing she was there. Giving the door a gentle shove, the dark-haired amber-skinned Felicity peeked beyond the hallway, and saw nothing. Tiptoeing further, she just barely glimpsed Jake, but then moved quickly into the kitchen out of sight. With all the bellowing and slapping that was going on, her movement was likely not detected, but she didn’t want to risk discovery. She had to have her portfolio from the study or she’d be dead meat a half hour later when her meeting with Mr. Macho Texas-guy was supposed to start. Negotiating her path to the study was a little tricky, however. It meant slipping into a room highlighted by a wall of windows that looked out on the living room—right where KC was getting her ass blistered. Peeking out the kitchen door, Felicity breathed a little easier when she spied Jake sitting on a dining room chair with his back to the study windows. And KC—well, she was completely occupied, squirming and kicking like a banshee to get out from under her boyfriend’s firm hold. With the portfolio lying on the top of the desk just a few feet from the kitchen door, snatching the leather satchel should be a piece of cake … but then there was the scene beyond the windows. At just the right angle Felicity could see KC’s bobbing behind getting one smart lick after another. Stopping in her tracks, she paused to watch mesmerized as each stroke of Jake’s powerful arm came down on that lusciously red derriere. When he suddenly stopped, she flinched and darted back into the safety of the kitchen. Hearing the commotion stop for a moment, she was stunned to hear it begin again, with the tone even more alarming. Another glance around the corner and she saw Jake with a wooden hairbrush in his hand smacking the round raw cheeks with as fierce a stroke as he used with his hand. The result: a KC in even more distress. “Stop it, you ass!” the blonde woman wailed when she was conscious enough to speak. When she wasn’t, she let out a wild riot of nonsensical cries, sprinkled liberally with four-letter words that KC would never use in normal language. To listen to her ranting, one would think that the man she wrote ten-page, perfume-soaked, red-heart filled, messages of love to daily—even when he was in town—was a “sonafabitch gutless, ball-less m’f*****g bastard she’d never lay eyes on ever again”. None of KC’s vows did anything to change her darling lover from his task. The hairbrush continued searing those twin globes with a zeal that held Felicity spellbound. She stared at the scene in speechless wonder, her body responding so strongly she was almost tempted to put her hand at her crotch and begin to rub—something that wouldn’t have surprised Felicity in the slightest. Spanking was not exactly foreign to her. Every lover she ever had, that would accommodate her desire, spanked her bottom for the s****l thrill of it. But there was nothing s****l happening here, no matter how Felicity was responding. No, her roommate was being punished. There was little doubt of that. Though she really couldn’t see Jake’s face, he was obviously pissed. For a seemingly mild-mannered man to become so physical with the woman he showered with poetry and love-songs, there was only one explanation for the moment. “Oh, gawd!” Felicity shrieked to herself. “He found out about ….” Looking further than the scene at the dining room chair, she spotted KC’s purse on the coffee table, its spilled contents, and yes, that must be the fake ID lying there. Gathering her wits, Felicity knew when it was time to move on. Quickly plucking the portfolio from the desk, she darted from the study, through the kitchen, into the hall. About to exit the apartment, she slipped against the doorpost and the portfolio turned upside-down spilling its contents on the slick floor. The spanking stopped abruptly. With a half-dozen papers sliding beyond the hallway into the living room, no retrieval of her necessary notes was possible without the pair in the living room seeing her. “Felicity!” She heard Jake’s sharp voice. “I’ll be out of here in a jiff,” she called to him. Scurrying past the hallway, she was on the floor scooping up papers, paying no attention to their disarray. “You’re going nowhere,” Jake barked at her. She looked up seeing the man standing over her looking down angrily. How huge he looked from this angle. She only remembered a few times being on her knees before her former boyfriend—when she’d been sucking on his erection. But never had she felt quite so small in his presence. Jake was a rather formidable man at times, at other times a regular pussycat. One thing for certain, the best thing that ever happened was when they drifted apart and he set his sights on her pretty roommate. KC was head-over-heels in love so quickly, Felicity was a little annoyed that the pairing happened so fast. As fierce as Jake could look, however, he was simply not strong enough for a headstrong, self-willed woman like Felicity. Physically, Jake was as dark as she was. They were both from eclectic mixed-parentage. Felicity was told she was half-white, obviously her mother’s side, and on her father’s, Hispanic, Black and Polynesian. Actually, it seemed that every relative she talked to had a different story about her ancestors—she never really knew and she really didn’t care. Jake was dark-skinned because he was a man with his roots in African soil as much as in European. Whatever combination of heritages he sprung from however, the result was six-foot tall, dark eyes, a weighty chest and, at the moment, a cleanly shaved head. She met him when he was a bouncer in a local dive—for Jake a part-time job that his appearance made him perfectly suited for. And yet, the other side of the imposing looking Jake Troy was a stunning intellectual and poet, currently an assistant professor of English at the University. Most of the time he was as mellow as a teddy bear, though, at the moment, he was as formidable as a girl’s worst nightmare. “Tell me you didn’t arrange that fake ID,” Jake said, holding up the forged document for Felicity to see. She didn’t want to incriminate herself, but there wasn’t much she was going to do to get out of this blunder. “Fake, huh?” Jake grabbed for her arm and pulled her swiftly to her feet, leveling a death-gaze that she tried to match with one of her own. Unfortunately, she had no grounds to counter the man since they both knew she was guilty. “You can’t take even a little subterfuge?” she queried him with a sugarcoated tongue and a coy expression in her eyes. “Using big words now?” he retorted. “You taught me well, my sweet poet.” “I ain’t being sweet now, babe. You’re going to get the same treatment on your ass that KC just got on hers.” “Oh, no,” she winced. He was a man of few words when he was in a mood, and boy, he was in one now! Truth was, if he’d been more like this when they were going together she might have stayed with him, or at least treated him better so he would have stuck around, or at the very least, hadn’t turned his eyes toward KC. Too bad he always had those marshmallow heartstrings she could tug. He might be in a foul mood but eventually he’d relent, and deep down inside she’d be pissed, because that wasn’t what she wanted him to do. If she was lucky, maybe this time she could take advantage of that soft trait. “Jake please,” she smiled innocently. “KC asked for the ID. I told her it wasn’t a good idea and she’d have to be really careful. I’m really ….” “You little b***h,” he said shaking his head. She got her answer quickly. Excuses and sweet-talk wouldn’t work. There’d be no marshmallow-hearted Jake today. Sitting on the same dining room chair that he just used, he quickly drew Felicity over his substantial lap. His thighs felt like granite rocks and she could feel his fierce intention hold her as firmly as his hands. “Jake stop!” she roared. “I’m late for a meeting! Please!” “Then be late!” he retorted without hesitation. Paying no mind to the furiously wriggling body, Jake raised Felicity’s short skirt to find her naked underneath, a fact he assumed would be true for the vampy tart. She never, unless she absolutely had to, wore panties. Coming down with the palm of his hand on her clenched derriere, he began to spank it as hard as he spanked his girlfriend. Felicity’s ass was small but plump, two very fleshy mounds of nakedness. While a humbled KC sat in fetal position on the couch looking on, her older, supposedly wiser, mentor took a rigorous punishment. The pace was furious. Jake wasn’t just pissed, he was furious. Doing his girlfriend’s behind had hardly taken an ounce of his fury away because he seemed to have a ton still stored within his powerful form. “Jake, this is stupid!” Felicity roared. Not only was it stupid, it stung as sharply as her mother’s hand had stung on her child’s behind, stung worse than bees planting their hind-ends in her flesh, and stung ten times worse than any playful erotic spanking a boyfriend had delivered to her behind. Funny—Jake had never indulged her spanking fantasies, but he sure wasn’t holding back now. She could feel the heat of it soar through her body, particularly focused on her thigh, which stung the worst. When he paused only to pick up the damned hairbrush, she was shocked to feel the punishment become more harrowing still. “Oh, I hate you!” she cried. “I don’t care!” he shot back. “You’re going to leave bruises!” she tried once more. “I don’t care,” he retorted easily. “You ass!” “You b***h!” The harder she struggled to get away, the more he proved his ability to overpower her. He had mighty arms for a “pussycat” and a mighty temper. Their waged battle continued until Felicity was too exhausted to go on. She was exhausted from the right, ready to relent, even as the painful strikes of the paddle continued to redden her ass. With just that small bit of resignation from her, Jake began to slow the smacks so they became easier to bear. The sting still bit, and her ass was still burning, but the pain had become more than pain. Stunned, chagrined and hurting, she was oddly aroused. With a few finishing smacks that were especially harsh, Jake ended it, pushing her unceremoniously off his lap. Caught off balance, she hit the floor and stared up at the man with tears in her eyes. “If I thought it would do any good, Felicity Moon, I’d take you … and you too,” he said, looking straight into KC’s scared eyes, “over my lap every day. You know she got arrested for using that false ID last night!” “She what?” “Yeah, I had to bail her out, and she was lucky to have a kind judge, but then maybe he was too weary to worry about a college student playing a stupid stunt. But I swear ….” “It’s gone, destroyed,” Felicity said, snatching the ID from the table and trying to rip it with her hands. “Yeah, it will be destroyed,” Jake, said calmly taking it away. “I can’t believe you had two copies made.” He shook his head. “I don’t know who the more irresponsible one here is,” he looked directly at Felicity, then at KC. “Is she being charged?” Felicity asked, carefully tiptoeing into what might be a messy minefield. “Thankfully, no,” he replied. “You know I can be really sweet when I want to be. It worked wonders on the judge. But I should have them haul you in for this.” “You can’t do that,” she snapped back. Felicity had more to say, but glancing at the clock, she was quickly on her feet. “Good gawd! I’m late for that meeting. You, you, you ….” She wanted to hiss in his face, but she didn’t have time. Racing back to her scattered papers, she gathered the mess in her arms and exited the apartment. *** “Miss Moon, you’re late.” The first words spoken to her when she entered the conference room were those of Grant Nichols, the ultimate ruler of her fate, Mr. Macho Texas, as she preferred to call him. He was dressed in cowboy boots and jeans, and for the occasion, added the formality of a camel’s hair sport coat. Underneath he wore a plain, white T-shirt, the look decidedly sexy, even if he was an ass. “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Nichols, my roommate was having a personal crisis, and then I was caught in traffic. She slipped into her seat with a confident yet not arrogant smile, and a manner so easy that no one but Grant Nichols really seemed to care that this breath of fresh air had been ten minutes tardy. The meeting was just getting started. “So are you ready with your presentation, Miss Moon?” Grant asked. “Certainly, sir,” she answered. Poised and contained, if not always a little kooky for her eccentric style, Felicity spent the next half hour wowing a mesmerized audience of computer and Internet illiterates. She gave them everything they didn’t need to know about her last three months preparing their website. Though they understood little, they knew they had first-class results. Everyone, including Grant Nichols walked out of the conference room with a smile on their face.